The present invention relates generally to scheduling mobile terminals on a shared high-speed multi-path propagation channel in a wireless communication system and more particularly to a method for computing signal-to-interference (SIR) estimates for use in making scheduling decisions.
In conventional CDMA systems, a base station (BS) transmits signals to a plurality of mobile terminals simultaneously on a multi-path propagation traffic channel. In the high-speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH) mode of wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) multi-path propagation, packet transmissions are time-multiplexed and transmitted at the full power available to the BS, but with data rates and slot lengths that vary depending on channel conditions. Thus, the BS transmits to only one mobile terminal at a time.
For the HS-DSCH mode, a scheduler at the BS schedules the multi-path propagation transmission to mobile terminals. The scheduler determines which mobile terminal to serve at any given time. Further, the scheduler determines the data rate for the multi-path propagation transmission and the length of the multi-path propagation transmission. There are many different approaches to scheduling for the HS-DSCH mode, each of which serves different objectives. Perhaps the simplest is round-robin scheduling where each mobile terminal is scheduled in turn to receive multi-path propagation transmission. Other scheduling approaches include maximum C/I (carrier to interference) scheduling or proportionally fair scheduling. The maximum C/I scheduling approach schedules the mobile terminal with the maximum C/I ratio to maximize data throughput. The proportionally fair scheduling approach attempts to be more evenhanded by maintaining the effective data transmission rate for all mobile terminals in the same proportion to the scheduled mobile terminal's maximum achieved rate.
Most scheduling approaches require knowledge of the SIR (signal-to-interference ratio) or SINR (signal to interference plus noise ratio) corresponding to the traffic channel of each mobile terminal being scheduled. The BS obtains SIR estimates from the mobile terminals being scheduled, or calculates the SIR from signal strength measurements made by the mobile terminals and transmitted to the BS. The mobile terminal that is currently scheduled, referred to herein as the scheduled mobile terminal, despreads the traffic channel, despreads the pilot channel, estimates the channel from the pilot channel, computes the traffic channel SIR using the channel estimates and the despread traffic channel, and sends the estimated traffic channel SIR and/or some other SIR-based information, i.e., a channel quality indicator (CQI) to the BS. The mobile terminals that are not currently scheduled, referred to herein as the non-scheduled mobile terminals, measure the received signal strength on the forward pilot channel, estimate the SIR from the pilot strength measurements, and send the estimated pilot SIRs to the BS. Because the transmit powers on the HS-DSCH are typically much larger than the pilot transmit power, the pilot SIR is scaled to obtain an estimate of the traffic channel SIR. Scaling the pilot SIR to estimate the traffic channel SIR produces reasonably accurate estimates when the pilot and traffic signals travel through the same effective channel.